will baker music

The concert opens with the UCLA Symphonic Band, an ensemble comprising talented students from across campus. Repertoire includes Frank Erickson’s Toccata for Band, a classic since its composition in 1957; Greg Danner’s award-winning Walls of Zion, based on the revivalist song set most famously by Aaron Copland; Charles Ives’s delightful Old Home Days suite; and Steven Bryant’s MetaMarch, which quotes and transforms themes from Americans We and The Liberty Bell.

The UCLA Wind Ensemble presents mostly contemporary works, beginning with Dana Wilson’s driving Shortcut Home and followed by three premieres—the West Coast premiere of the wind version of Los Angeles composer Adam Schoenberg’s Canto, the world premiere of UCLA composition student Vittorio Russo’s Invocation for wind ensemble and electronics, and the world premiere of the wind version of Robert Tindle’s At Sixty Miles an Hour concerto for bass trombone. The latter work was premiered in its earlier versions with piano and orchestra by UCLA alumnus Will Baker ’10, who returns to solo with the UCLA Wind Ensemble for this performance. Baker currently serves as principal bass trombone of the Monterey Symphony and Des Moines Symphony and has also played recently with both the San Francisco and Detroit symphonies.

I am so excited to share the first movement of Robert Tindle‘s “At 60 Miles an Hour” concerto for #BassTrombone! Commissioning this piece in 2016 with the help of the Southeast Iowa Symphony Orchestra was one of the highlights of my career, Robert and…